A Few Important Points about Dopamine’s Role in Neural Network Dynamics

Dopamine modifies a large variety of cellular and synaptic biophysical parameters in a seemingly paradoxical manner. Predicting their implications for neural network dynamics and computation seems difficult. Here I briefly review experimental and simulation data which illustrate that the diverse ionic consequences may combine such that dopamine's overall effect strongly depends on the activity state of the postsynaptic network, potentially with a temporal profile. These properties could be crucial for understanding dopamine's functional role.

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